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I used to golf but strictly as a casual activity. In terms of difficulty I would rate it as easy to medium. I would rate mastering it very highly difficult but, that goes for any activity doesn't it? But, in terms of fitness level required or energy expended I rate golf extremely low. Consider this as a recreational golfer you can spend most of the time out on the course with a beer in your hand. Try that in any other sporting activity you can imagine.

Golf is easy to medium? Let do an experiment, find any person with reasonable hand and eye coordination giving him or her a golf club and a racket asking that person hit the bird and a golf ball. The condition is this person never play golf and badminton before. What will be the result? I believe everyone that plays golf and badminton knows.

def, RF would make a good badminton player. the skills required overlap to a very large extend. i used to play tennis competitevely as a junior and could compete with lower level badminton club players from my first training on when i switched to badminton. there's a lot of similarities, therefore RF would def be a good badminton player if he worked hard on that.

MJ would very likely be very good in any sports with a ball. he has an unbeliveable touch, superhuman athletic and mental skills. nevertheless, a racket sport is still a bit different, but i would suspect he could handle it with proper training.

BL is hard to tell! of course he's ultra-agile, fast, flexible and so on. but is he able to do anything sensible with a ball or a racket? i can't tell...

TW def has the touch you need, but it's very hard to judge is physical abilities, especially for badminton.

if i had to answer the question: "with 100 hours of training, who of the 4 would be the best?" i would bet all my money on RF.

but what happened if they had all begun as kids, i don't know. i would think that RF and MJ would be world class players. i'm pretty sure about RF. better than LCW and LD? hard to tell, but a lot speaks in favor of RF, as he's the best in a (at least) comparable competitive environment in a very comparable sport...

There was once or twice that I heard a competition of 4 rackets sports. Squash, Badminton, Tennis and Table tennis and guess who the winner is Badminton player.

Golf, don't know how difficult this sport is to achieve high standard. But if you think country like Korea and China as relatively new comer in Golf Elite rank, how many of them now has started to be counted in world high rank. Fiji with population less than a million has once had a top player (I think is BJ Singh). In the very near future will be dominated with Asian but then popularity will diminish in Western develop countries. Like badminton was once dominated by Europe and USA.
Is about how the media and hence money to make a sport popular and glamorous.
If one billion Chinese + half a billion Indian + another half billion others who are developing to become develop country then greedy giant company will start look at the sport. This is to any sports not only badminton.
Give an example the popularity of Japanese sports like Judo, Karate, Shumo in Western countries. Why? is because not only the sports itself is attractive but so does many sports. The so call rich people sports is always will attract rich people group. You know the explanation right.
So just don't worry about popularity of Badminton has some how been compared to Tennis and Golf, basketball etc. We now know why. It will comes.
If someone want to compare Badminton and Table-tennis or Sepaktakraw then we can genuinely compare in pure analytical way otherwise too many wishy washy arguments.

How about everyone here willing to participate a bit of fun analyzing and rank them 1 to 5 if BL, TW, RF, MJ, Lcw or LD are trained (limited time, 1 year) by the best coach in the field of the following sports : 10m platform Diving, Rock climbing, Dancing (contemporary). These sports are new to them which require physical, mental, intelligent and artistic ability.

but what happened if they had all begun as kids, i don't know. i would think that RF and MJ would be world class players. i'm pretty sure about RF. better than LCW and LD? hard to tell, but a lot speaks in favor of RF, as he's the best in a (at least) comparable competitive environment in a very comparable sport...

Except RF would have grown up playing badminton in Switzerland. Props if you can name a Swiss badminton player from his age category . Of course you could make the same point for a tennis player in Switzerland probably but the internationalisation/ globalisation of tennis had already started when he was growing up ...
TW and MJ would have grown up playing badminton in the USA and we all know how competitive the high school circuit is over there (let alone the geographical disadvantage both nationally and internationally)

kinda old thread but my take is simple. Don't believe anyone has mentioned but
Michael Jordan and baseball. So regardless of how successful and talented one is it can never/easily equate to such in another sport.
Despite my rather limited scope, Shawn White has won gold in both snowboarding and X Games in skateboarding. So as mentioned perhaps top squash athletes would excel best in baddy as opposed to the others mentioned perhaps outside of RF.